Few people would think about Kazakhstan as an Arctic country. No part of this country as big as Western Europe touches the Arctic Region, and its northernmost point, around 40 km north of Petropavlovsk, is pretty much at the same latitude of Copenhagen. Still, the northern part of the country lies within the hydrographic basin of the Arctic Ocean. This includes the southern part of the basin of the Irtysh River, which together with the Ob makes the fourth longest river in Asia with its 5,410 km, and some of its main affluents such as the Ishim River – the one which flows through Astana – and the Tobol. And since all these rivers are navigable, the development of river navigation on the Ob river and its many affluents – in particular the Irtysh River – will give this Central Asian country a direct access to the Arctic Ocean.
The key city of Kazakhstan’s Arctic way is Pavlodar. Located in northeastern Kazakhstan, around 400 km east of Astana, and with an ethnically mixed population, this provincial city is located on the east bank of the Irtysh River and has a population of around 350,000 inhabitants. Its port was built in 1955, when the Campaign of the Virgin Lands gave great impulse to the development of the city. The overall outcome of the campaign was below the expectations, but this didn’t hinder the development of the port, which became during the mid-80’s the largest transshipment river port in the Soviet Union. Like many infrastructures which relied mostly on trans-republican links, the Pavlodar River Port experienced a decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but its potential is still great, and the port is currently capable of uploading and downloading up to 6,5 million tons of goods per year. Pavlodar River Port JSC, the company which manages the port, was privatised in 2001.
The potential of the Pavlodar River Port as Kazakhstan’s gateway to the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is further helped by the development of the Port of Sabetta, in the large mouth of the Ob River. The construction of the Port of Sabetta is much more recent (the building works started in October 2013) and it was initially strictly linked to the exportation of LNG from the nearby Yamal fields. Given the opening of the Northern Sea Route, nevertheless, the port acquired another function as well, namely as a transshipment point between sea and river transport. This helps to explain why Sabetta became the fastest-growing sea port of Russia, with a 280.7% growth in the volume of transported goods in 2017 compared to the previous year, and why it’s now the second arctic port of Russia after Murmansk, with an overall volume of 27.8 million tons of transported goods in 2023.
The opening of the Ob-Irtysh Route has several economic and geopolitical implications. Kazakhstan is a landlocked country, which relies on neighbouring countries for a direct access to the open seas. Its main port is currently Aktau, with a capacity of 40,000 TEU per year which can be increased up to 215,000 in the future, but the location of the port on the Caspian Sea greatly limits its potential. Since the Caspian is a closed basin, after all, any good shipped at Aktau should be disembarked on its western shores (usually in Baku or in Mahachkala) and then transported by land through either Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia or Turkey in order to be reshipped by sea. Western powers have been eyeing up the Port of Aktau for the development of trade routes to Central Asia and China which bypass Russia and Iran well before 2022, namely through the development of shipping routes to Baku, but in spite of this the importance of Aktau as a seaport is likely to be limited to the Caspian Region and the neighbouring states for the foreseeable future.
Is Pavlodar going to overgrow Aktau in terms of importance? While the opening of the Ob-Irtysh Route would give Kazakhstan an unhindered access to the Northern Sea Route, at least in theory, in practice ocean-going vessels can navigate the Ob River for up to 1,200 km upstream from Sabetta. This would allow them to reach the middle of the West Siberian Plain, but it’s still way north of the Russo-Kazakhstani border. Therefore, loads would require a transshipment from sea to river barges (or viceversa) in the Port of Sabetta before sailing towards the NSR or upstream towards Kazakhstan or Western Siberia. It should be remarked that the Gulf of Ob is usually covered by ice sea until June-July, although the Port of Sabetta is now kept open year-round by icebreakers. Still, in spite of these self-evident issues, the importance of the Ob-Irtysh Route as a way to connect Kazakhstan and Western Siberia with the NSR is likely to increase.
The first international shipment along the Irtysh River set up on 17th July 2016, when the Dutch ship “Happy Dover” set off from the South Korean port of Ulsan in order to transport two 600-ton reactors for the Pavlodar Oil Refinery. The reactors were disembarked in Sabetta on 15th August, in order to be transported on river barges owned by the Irtysh Shipping Company, and reached Pavlodar on the 25th of the same month. Further deliveries took place in 2017, this time to deliver ten shiploads to a new refinery in the Russian riverine city of Tobolsk. And, despite the long transport times and the complicated logistics, shipping companies still claim that this is the best option for shipments to and from Central Siberian destinations. Therefore, the opportunities are great not only for Kazakhstan (in particular its northern regions), but also for South-Western Siberia: according to the administration of the Omsk Oblast, one of the granaries of Russia, the usage of the Irtysh River to ship grain eastwards through the NSR is around 40% cheaper than traditional routes.
Nevertheless, there is still much that could be done in order to fully exploit the potential of the Ob-Irtysh route. The issue of the depth of the Irtysh River has been discussed during the XVI Kazakhstani-Russian Forum for the Interregional Cooperation, held in Omsk between 6th and 7th November 2019. On the eve of the forum, a representative of the Pavlodar River Port JSC stated that a minimum depth of 1.6 meters is required to fully load a barge, but the river reaches an average depth of just 1.35 metres between the Russian border and Omsk, the first main Russian city on the Irtysh River. This force barges to travel at half load, carrying 1,4 kilotons of goods rather than 2.8. During the Forum itself, the Governor of the Omsk Oblast Aleksandr Burkov proposed a joint Russo-Kazakhstani development of the Irtysh River. The two countries, in his opinion, should establish a joint institution with the authority to implement riverbed enlargement works, build supporting hydraulic structures, regulate the intake of water for private usage and so on. The proposal attracted much interest, but two years later it was still on paper.
Still, the opening of the NSR and the role of the Ob-Irtysh River as a connector between the former on the one hand and Kazakhstan, South-Western Siberia and North-Western China on the other hand led to an increase in the public interest in the development of river navigation. The Kazakhstani government, in particular, has recently launched an ambitious plan for the development of its trait of the Irtysh River. This includes riverbed excavation works for an overall length of 160 km, a new upstream port in Tugyl, on the Lake Zaysan, and a new 99-km long railway link between the new port and Maykapshagay, on the border with China, in order to allow the usage of the port by Chinese companies as well. During a recent press conference in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Transports Marat Karabayev stated that “we want that water transport connects China and Russia” and claimed that “according to our estimates, 2.5 million more tons of goods can be transported by river”. In 2023, around 1,65 million tons of goods were transported along the Irtysh River. 279,000 of them have been transported between Kazakhstan and Russia alone, with an increase of 34,000 tons from the previous year. Astana wants to increase the overall volume up to 4,6 million tons. Some Kazakhstani pundits even wondered if Pavlodar could become Kazakhstan’s Chicago, whose position on the Lake Michigan helped it to become the second city in the US in terms of economic weight after New York (and before even bigger Los Angeles).
The parallelisms between Pavlodar and Chicago may sound a little bit over the top, since these pundits probably overlooked the role of the Chicago Portage (a mud-covered gap linking the Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River Basin, later replaced by the Illinois Waterway along the same route) in the development of the Windy City. Pavlodar hasn’t got any equivalent of the Portage. Still, in spite of this, the potential of the Irtysh River as a transit route is great, and even the ambitious targets set up by the Kazakhstani government are inferior to the actual volume of goods transported along the river during the Soviet times. During the 50’s and the 60’s, around 3 million tons of goods were transported along the Irtysh River each year, and a peak of 9 million tons per year was reached during the following decade. Even the machinery for the construction of the Semipalatinsk Meat Factory, one of the biggest in the USSR, was transported from Chicago (!) through the Arctic Ice Sea and then along the Irtysh River.
As a whole, the perspectives for the development of the Ob-Irtysh River as a main Eurasian navigation route are positive. The idea of a joint Russian-Kazakhstani development of the Irtysh River is likely to bring positive developments for the development of the economic potential of the river, as well as for the resolution of potential disputes, as shown by the overall success of the cooperation between Kazakhstan and China for the joint exploitation of the waters of the Ili-Balkhash River Basin. Moreover, Russian and Kazakhstani have a long history of successful cooperation on both a corporate and an institutional level; and, while the ongoing conflict between Russia and NATO and the threat of Western sanctions has been creating several problems in the business relations between Russia and Kazakhstan, as shown by the sale of the Baimskaya Copper Project, one of the largest undeveloped copper mines in the world, by KAZ Minerals in August 2023, it’s also true that the latest months have been seeing a relaunch of the many joint projects. The examples are manifold, from the almost-completed Baiterek Space Complex (the first flight tests will take place in 2025) to the gas export agreement between Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Some of these projects involve namely logistics, such as the ongoing construction of a new main logistical centre in Selyatino (near Moscow) by a joint venture including Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, Kazakhstan’s national railway company, Russia’s Slavtrans Service and China’s Xian Free Trade Port Construction and Operation Co.
Still, any discussion about the usage of the Irtysh River should include China as well. Unlike the Russian and the Kazakhstani authorities, the Chinese ones haven’t expressed much interest in the topic of the river navigation along the Irtysh River so far; but, at the same time, China has great plans for the Xinjiang region as a gateway towards Central Asia, Russia, the Middle East and Western Europe, and Beijing aims to increase the population of the region from the 25 million people in 2021 to 100 million people by 2030. This has two potential consequences. On the one hand, the northwestern portion of Xinjiang – including its capital city Ürümqi – may greatly benefit from the development of the navigation along the Irtysh River. On the other hand, the water requirements of the Xinjiang region will inevitably increase, perhaps dramatically. Therefore, in order to prevent a potential depletion of the Irtysh River basin and to further promote the river itself as a cross-border gateway to the Arctic, both Russia and Kazakhstan have any interest to involve the Chinese authorities and business in order to set up a far-reaching strategy for the development of river navigation in the basin without any detriment for the development of the region.
Giuseppe Cappelluti
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